


Picking Up The Pieces

by Britpacker



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Post Series, going public
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 00:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It won't be easy, but at least he has help.  Malcolm, post Goolding</p>
            </blockquote>





	Picking Up The Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of a prequel to my fic "Lazarus And The Smoking Gun". I'm an optimist; Malcolm wouldn't go to prison in my world!

In the hush of the courtroom the scratchy caw of Mr Justice Popplewell resounded like a full-bodied bass shout. “And do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”

The middle-aged foreman shuffled his feet. Tried to keep his eyes on the judge’s and failed. “Not guilty.”

Gasps. Squeaks. A wave of emotion, all the more potent for being carefully repressed, rolled through the stern, spare chamber.

In the dock the defendant let his chin sink onto his chest, his tired eyes closing for a moment. He should feel something. Relief? The savage exultation of besting the bastards one more time?

He couldn’t raise the energy. It didn’t matter any more. Nothing did.

He was conscious of the bustle in the wider room; the hacks falling over themselves in the rush to escape their cage; the public rising from their gallery, whispers and half-repressed snorts of laughter rising around them like discarded sweet papers on the wind. His legal team shaking their hands instead of simply rubbing them at the amount of fucking cash they were screwing out of their notorious client. Well, fuck them. Fuck them all.

Acquittal made a difference, he noticed. The police officer stationed behind the dock offered a wan smile as he was ushered down. Instead of the curt “This way, please” there was a mumbled “Congratulations, Mr Tucker, if you’d be kind enough to come this way, sir.” 

Meek as a child the man who had been the most feared beast in the whole Westminster jungle allowed himself to be hustled away, beyond the confines of a stifling room and into the blessed cool of an empty corridor. “Just along here, sir, if you don’t mind; your lawyers will join you and once the formalities are over with – well, you’re free to go.”

Voices. That’s what they all were, just disembodied voices. The court officials lightly pushing at his shoulder, trying to guide him like a blind buffer on a busy road. The more strident, public school ponces congratulating themselves – _themselves_ , for fuck’s sake, as if he’d had nothing to do with it – on the verdict, pumping his hand and slapping him on the back. 

And he couldn’t even summon a glare to push the obnoxious, money-grubbing creeps back into their plush leather-lined coffins. He was vaguely disappointed in himself but the bubble around him felt so tight, so secure it was almost comforting, and he couldn’t bring himself to be the one to pierce it.

Then he saw her. 

Long hair flying into her face, barging her way past a protesting court usher like a tabloid snapper at a nightclub, her usually composed features contorted as she cried out his name. “Let her through, for fuck’s sake!”

Until he felt the words rasp against the back of his tight throat he had no idea he intended to utter them.

“Malcolm!” Shaking with sobs Sam Cassidy, the world’s best personal assistant, collapsed against his chest, hugging him so tight he knew a brief moment of fear for his ribs. Moisture soaked through the fine cotton of his shirt, turning the white fabric translucent where it glued itself to his skin. “Thank God, oh thank God, I was so scared….”

“It’s OK, love, it’s all OK, come on.” Fuck the formalities. Fuck the future. Fuck everything. He had to take care of her. “You’ve been tellin’ me all along it would be, yeah? It’s OK, you just cry it out, pet. I’m here. I’m here.”

“Oh Malcolm!” He’d only seen her break once before – when that snake Fleming had got him the push for all of the few weeks it took for the Party to realise it couldn’t do without him. 

The irony of it stabbed in his guts. It was going to fucking have to now. Ollie Reeder. A Director of fucking Communications who couldn’t fucking communicate with the nearest fucking wall without getting his fucking lines mixed up. 

Even inside his head the sentence lacked heat. Let Twatweasle fuck it up. He could do that, if nothing else, as well as the next man.

“Mister Tucker, the press are hoping for a statement.” Oh, so it was _Mister Tucker_ again; even the legal eagles pleasingly fearful now their client was vindicated and out of his cage. “We’ll have a car ready in fifteen minutes, but it _will_ be rather a scrum.”

“You Charterhouse by any chance?”

The bespectacled baldy – obviously a public school education turned them all out the same in the end – did a satisfying double-take. “Ahem! Yes, as a matter of fact. How did you….”

“No matter.” Sam shuddered in his arms: repressed laughter, Malcolm gathered as she dug her nose in below his collarbone. “Is there somewhere the lady can wash her face? Come on lass, chin up, yeah?”

She nodded, pulling back far enough to fix glassy, swollen dark eyes on his concerned face. “I must look a right mess,” she muttered, fumbling into her blazer for a tissue.

Malcolm had a clean handkerchief – cotton, of course – from his pocket first. “You’re fuckin’ gorgeous, girl and if anyone says different I’ll have their fuckin’ entrails for Ellen’s new skipping rope. Go on – go and throw some cold water at yourself while I’m workin’ out what to say to those poor disappointed cunts outside.”

The female usher who had charged down the corridor in Sam’s wake and his public school primping nonce of a barrister both looked scandalised. “They only came in the hope of a good hanging,” he pointed out reasonably. “Preferably mine. Any chance of finding somewhere to sit for five minutes?”

“This way, sir.” The young official who had hovered around like a bad smell all trial opened a discreet side door while the woman took Sam by the arm.

“Take as much time as you need,” Julius II added with an attempt at sympathetic kindness Malcolm hadn’t seen before and wished he hadn’t now. “They’re not likely to go anywhere.”

“Unless the pubs are open.” Drafting statements was second nature: ministerial apologies; resignations; wordy, meaningless explanations that rendered the simple inexplicable. He’d done them all. If he wasn’t allowed to say “Fuck off, vultures” directly, he’d find a fancy format for saying it all the same. 

Even if it was less satisfying than the succinct version.

They left him alone – a little bit afraid of him, which made him feel good even before Sam returned to sit tranquilly at his side, just on the inside edge of personal space for mere friendship. “OK, I know my line,” he announced at length. She squeezed his arm.

“You always do; it’s the other muppets that couldn’t stick to it.”

To his great surprise, Malcolm laughed. He was even more surprised a moment later to see his own hand stretching out, fingers splayed, toward her.

Sam eyed it with suspicion. “Please?” he heard himself croak.

Malcolm Tucker never begged. Or so he thought. 

Her smooth, wide-open features creased. “Y-you want me to come out front with you?”

“Yes.” 

Her palm, soft and succulent, pressed into his. Their fingers linked. “Distraction technique?” she queried shakily.

His quick, indrawn breath shook her almost as much as the spasm of real fear that tightened his lean features. “A plea. For strength,” he answered.

“Oh, Malc!” Only she called him that now; only she would dare. Her grip tightened and she held his gaze steadily, warm brown eyes caressing cool grey. “You don’t need my strength, you’ve got plenty enough of your own. No, don’t argue with me, I’ve seen the fire coming back into you since prosecuting counsel started their games. All you needed was a challenge; something to _make_ you fight back. I – I was worried at first, but I know now. You’re going to be fine.”

“Course I’m fucking fine, I’m always fuckin’ fine.” It was a lie, and the sad little half-smile accompanying the words told Sam he knew it. “Oh all right, have it your fuckin’ way, I wasn’t for a wee while, but that’s the job, yeah? Picked me up and sucked the fucking life out of me, then chucked me off onto the scrapheap like Glenn quisling bastard Cullen’s fancy fucking vibrating throne. That wasn’t me, Sam. Jesus, it’s not been me – _really_ me – for so long I’ve forgotten who _Malcolm_ really is.”

She’d heard rumours of his parting shot to his smug little shit of a successor. Not so cocky now, by all accounts. Somehow, he’d always kept those embittered reflections from her.

Sam thought she’d appreciated that. Now, witnessing the pain, the emptiness that filled his eyes and voice, she kicked herself for failing him so badly. 

“ _I_ know,” she stated. His brows shot up.

“He’s the man who tore a verbal strip off the Home Secretary for pushing a secretary out of his way at the fax machine. The one who tells silly stories to his niece over the phone when she’s been scared by a storm. He’s the man who blushed when I said _I love you_ for the first time – and still blushes when I say it now! 

“He’s the man who comforted me when his own world was falling apart and yelled at the Smug Squad for crowding me when I cried. The honest, passionate, loyal, _beautiful_ man who gave everything for his Party and said nothing when it smashed him in the teeth. That, sir, is Malcolm fucking Tucker, and I’m fucking PROUD to say I know him!”

The longer her speech went on, the louder it got and the lower his jaw dropped. “I don’t know what the future’s going to be,” Sam finished, more quietly as somebody’s shoes squeaked embarrassingly in the corridor outside. “But whatever it is, I know you can handle it.”

“I –“ for the first time in their ten year acquaintance he was lost for words, and it broke her heart to see it. He should be utterly self-confident, bristling with power and energy, the human hurricane of their Downing Street days. No longer broken but still boyish, uncertain, he was recognisably her Malcolm: but not completely him. 

Not yet. Still, Sam knew they’d get there, and God help the carpers, the cringers and the delicate of sensibility when they did!

“If you’re with me.”

The words were a whisper; had he not chosen the exact same moment to tighten his grip on her hand she might have believed them a figment of her hyperactive imagination. “Always,” she pledged.

He sighed; stretched his long frame as he dragged himself upright, never letting go of her hand. “In that case, shall we get this over with and go home?”

She let herself be pulled up against him, getting up onto her toes to plant a kiss on his nose. “We’re probably better off hiding at my place,” she volunteered, repressing a shudder at the thought of the yelling horde camped outside his gate throughout the trial. 

When he didn’t argue – protest about her silly wee bed, or that mimsy wee couch, or that miniscule fucking kitchen Nic’la Murray couldn’t have gone into without a fucking panic attack breaking out – she knew he was thinking the same. “Just for a couple of days,” she added encouragingly.

“All right.”

“Then there are your memoirs for us to start on. Come on, you know there’s going to be a bidding war, three separate publishers couldn’t even wait for a verdict before making offers.”

“ _Us_ to start on?” he queried, head cocked.

Sam grinned. “You’re a God-awful careless typist; and where’ll you find anyone else who can keep up with your dictation _and_ censor the expletives as well as I can? Jesus Christ, we could take down half the Cabinet as well as the entire Shadow one with all the dirt you’ve got on the bastards!”

When he laughed, almost tugging her over on the way to the door, her confidence surged. The gleam in his eyes almost dazzled her. “You know love, I think we could!”


End file.
